UNLIKELY APOSTLE Sermon Presented to St. Paul’s Church 7 Easter, Acts 1:15-17, 21-26, Year B, May 13, 2018 Thack Dyson

Can you recall a time when you met someone who wasn’t necessarily popular, flashy or charismatic, and yet had a profound impact on your life? If you have, you can probably relate to the call of Matthias in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

Matthias wasn’t exactly a head liner among the first disciples, which may account for why he is only mentioned in this passage from the Acts of the Apostles. Nevertheless, we remember him, not only in our lesson this morning, but on his feast day every February 24th.

So, what do we remember about Matthias? We know that he was chosen to replace Judas in the circle of Jesus’ apostles. Peter says in this passage that the single criterion for the election of a successor is that the candidate is “one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us.” (Acts 1:21-22). Two men were named as qualified, Matthias and

Joseph “Barsabbas.” Also called Justus. After prayerfully seeking the Lord’s guidance, lots were cast. Matthias is in and Justus is out. Matthias and Justus then disappeared into obscurity, their fifteen minutes of fame behind them forever. Never again is either man mentioned in the Bible. Not a single action is reported, not a single word.

So, why is this story in Acts worth mentioning? Well, all of us have known people like

Matthias in our lives. He is the person who just missed getting in the photograph; either he was not there when it was taken or he stood behind someone taller or bigger. Yet he was very much a part of our circle of friends and acquaintances. People like this turn up many times in our lives, including in the life of a parish. They are the people that you never get to really know beyond the

1 shake of the hand at the coffee hour. At first, she may volunteer her name, but somehow it never settles in your mind and she remains anonymous in her quiet, faithful way. Months, even years go by until something happens or something is said that makes you realize that there is within this person a very great soul. It could be something simple, like a get-well card or a meal when you’re sick, or simply remembering your birthday. Or, something so significant, that the whole congregation comes to realize that hidden within its life is someone who has boundless courage, faithfulness or generosity. I call someone like that “Matthias.”

I have a feeling that the one thing the apostles were not looking for that day when they cast their lots was someone extraordinary. The reason is simple if you think about it. I think that the one thing that had dawned on Jesus’ disciples by the time Matthias was elected was that

Jesus had not called any of them to himself because of any extraordinary qualities, but because they were rather ordinary human beings in whom he had seen something.

I suspect that Matthias had done only one thing: he had shown he could hang in there when things got tough. As Peter says, Matthias was uniquely qualified to be an apostle because he was one of those who “accompanied us during all the time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us.” Right away that tells us that Matthias was prepared to remain with the community through thick and thin. He stayed faithful even when he wasn’t the center of attention. He was simply one of the crowd. Were it not for such faithful men and women, the church would have come apart at the seams. They quietly and faithfully held the church together over the centuries so we could gather together today in worship. That’s why we remember them. Matthias is a good example of someone whose steady, quiet faithfulness qualified him to be a disciple and I suspect we know people just like him.

2 However, have you also encountered people of unknown or no religious convictions, whose actions had a transformative impact on your faith? I speaking of those like Matthias who quietly exemplified the Christ-like qualities that influenced us but were not professing

Christians?

The Scripture has folks like that who were in some cases outsiders and yet exhibited a stronger faith than those who called themselves faithful. Rahab from the Book of Joshua is a good example. She hid Joshua’s spies on her rooftop before the conquest of the City of Jericho.

Another is the Syrophoenician woman who asked Jesus to heal her demon possessed daughter.

Though not a Jew, she impressed Jesus with her remarkable faith and fearless devotion to her daughter, even after Jesus essentially referred to her and her race as dogs. In these stories, God used these random folks as living witnesses to true faithfulness and to influence believers.

These stories reveal how we can learn from the examples of others, even if they are not baptized Christians. Seventeen of us had that experience in the Holy Land.

Our tour guide in Israel was Lior Rothenberg. Lior was born and raised in Jerusalem, the son of a commercial artist. He described himself and his family as “traditional Jews” in that they observe the three major feasts in Judaism (Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot), study the Torah and pray together. However, Lior was never part of a worshipping community. His wife was raised the same way. Lior’s wife is a school teacher and they have three children. He and his family live in the Golan Heights in northern Israel.

Lior has a degree in environmental science. Following college, Lior served his mandatory military obligation as an intelligence officer in Lebanon during the South Lebanon conflict in the

1990’s. Lior came to the States after he completed his military service and worked on a dairy

3 farm in upstate New York. He stayed in New York for a year and then returned to Israel and began working as an environmental scientist.

Lior found his profession to be boring and he yearned to meet new people and experience new things. This yearning was fueled by his developing interest in his study of Judaism and

Christianity.

While serving in the Israeli Defense Force, Lior acquired a Christian bible and read it.

This began his passion for the study of the Judeo-Christian religions and his attempt to identify the many parallels between the two. As a Jew, he does not recognize Jesus as the Son of God, but does recognize that his ethical teachings and life represented the best qualities of humanity.

He thoughtfully considered how he could feed his hunger for the study of religions, and establish new relationships with people. This led him to leave his career in environmental science and become a religious tour guide.

Lior has an obvious passion for the Old and New Testaments and is well versed in both.

Because of this passion, he opened the Scriptures to us in such a way that the people from the stories came alive for us and the places mentioned now have a deeper meaning than ever before.

More importantly, he met us where we were in our faith and honored our tradition and beliefs.

Our group was blessed by Lior’s teachings and our faith was strengthened by them. The irony of our relationship is that our Christian faith was enriched by a Jew. In many ways Lior is like the Apostle Matthias. He was an unlikely witness of the love of God and blessed many people through his faith and example. Whether he intended it or not, he blessed us in ways none of us expected.

God puts unlikely people like Matthias and Lior in our lives as reminders that God can use anyone to advance God’s purposes. Our job is to simply listen to all the people and

4 experiences in our life and in doing so, we may encounter an unlikely disciple who might say or do something that will transform our faith.

AMEN

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